


A Family Affair

by foxjar



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Ghouls (Tokyo Ghoul), Cannibalism, Cousin Incest, F/M, Horror, Murder, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2021-01-03 01:57:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21171527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxjar/pseuds/foxjar
Summary: Karren is tasked with a gruesome family ritual.





	A Family Affair

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: cannibal.

Despite the Tsukiyama mansion boasting dozens of rooms and a multitude of servants, Karren is alone. She is always alone, in a way — worming her way into a home she has never belonged to. It's always quiet on nights like these as she waits for the courage to finally strike her.

It never does. Instead, it is love that overcomes her as her thoughts tune with the ticking of the mantel clock, head bobbing to the sound. It is love that guides her, dragging her from the sitting room and out to the backyard. The rows of flowers blanket the yard, hiding the secrets hidden deep beneath the soil.

Like with so many other things about her, it isn't something Shuu is privy to.

"It would break him," Mirumo told her once. "You know how fragile he can be."

The trapdoor to the cellar lies in the orchard, sitting between trees that bear the sweetest apples in fall. She loved them as a child; when she first came to stay with the Tsukiyama family, she didn't know any better. After Mirumo told her of their traditions, she stopped eating the fruit. The truth had made them rot.

She brushes the leaves away from the door, the recent downpour making them stick to the ancient, warped wood. Then her hands find the padlock, thumb running across the keyhole. It would be so easy to turn away now when no one is here to see her fail. And yet, despite being alone, she still feels their eyes on her, judging her.

_For Shuu._ It's all for Shuu, just like everything she does.

The cellar itself is wide and sprawling, built generations ago and enhanced over the years to meet the family's particular needs. It wasn't always this big, Mirumo told her once. It wasn't always this clean.

There are some corridors she hasn't explored, even in all her years with the Tsukiyama family, but she knows where her destination lies. She sticks to the path set before her, unwilling to branch out now. Any number of horrors could await her, even more gruesome than the reality she already knows.

It's the rattling of chains that tells her she's close — the broken, choked sobs guiding her deeper into the abyss. And then there's the door in front of her: brown and dirty with a thin slot for food to be pushed through when necessary.

She didn't bring any food today.

The woman inside the cramped room is dirty, her hair matted with filth. Karren doesn't know who she is or what her name happens to be, and she doesn't ask. She doesn't want a name attached to what she must do — a life cut so tragically short by shaky hands.

This isn't the first time she's killed someone, and it won't be the last. Although the woman begs for her life — with "please" and "no" cried over and over — Karren ignores it.

For Shuu.

The woman struggles feebly against her, worn out from near-starvation but still fighting to stay alive. Karren admires that fire of having something she wants to live for, but in the end, she's covered in blood and the woman has become just another number. A statistic that only she is keeping track of.

When Karren first came to live in Japan, she knew about the family custom, albeit vaguely. Both of her parents had grown up with the same tradition, but it was never Karren's duty to participate. The flesh was always placed before her, already sawn from the bone of whoever had the misfortune of being caught last; the humanity had already been stripped away.

It was Karren who helped her mother prepare the meat, dicing it up for soup or slicing it for gourmet sandwiches. She didn't understand the pain behind the ingredients — the life that had been lost. She was told to always be grateful for the sacrifices their meals entailed, no matter the dish, but she never equated that to the loss of human life.

If she knew then what she knows now, she would have looked at her family differently. She would've been kinder to her brothers, who were tasked with the same duty she is now: the slaughter. She would have hugged them tighter when she had the chance.

But they were taken from her, just like her mother and father, in what was supposedly a random act of violence. Their home in Germany was ransacked while everyone slept, and only Karren survived the ordeal. If she had never found out the truth about her family, she might've agreed with that ruling, but now she isn't so sure.

_Was what happened to my family karma — because of what they did?_

_Is it coming for me next?_

In the Tsukiyama household, Karren both commits the murder as well as prepares the meat. Her life has come full circle in a way, her burdens piling up further as they crush her beneath their weight. It's not only her family's legacy that she carries upon her shoulders now; it is the lives of countless innocents, snuffed out by her own hand.

The worst part of it might be that Shuu loves her cooking. Mirumo always makes an event of the ritual, as per the customs he's upheld his entire life, and everyone dresses in their finest for the meal. Shuu always wears one of his extravagantly colored suits, ripe with vivid patterns, as he compliments the food: the texture, spice, flavor.

Even in his mid-twenties, he has no idea what he's eating. Mirumo never told him, allegedly due to Shuu's "sensitive temperament," and while he can be extreme — slipping into hyperfixations at any moment without prior notice — Karren thinks it's selfishness that keeps the father from telling his son. Shuu means more to Mirumo than anything else in the world, and he doesn't wish to worry his son, but the cannibalistic itself is a burden.

_If he truly loved him, wouldn't he stop?_

_Wouldn't he let this cruelty die?_

When Shuu asks for her to join him outside after dinner, her heart flutters. They gaze at the flowers together, and Karren tries not to think of the cellar nestled out in the orchard. In the darkness, she can almost pretend it isn't real. It doesn't exist.

He kisses her beneath the stars, and for the briefest of moments, she has found happiness. But then she can taste the food still lingering on his lips, on his breath — "pork," Mirumo always tells him. She sags in his arms, tired and defeated, but Shuu holds her up like he always does.

Shuu has no idea what she does for him, and if she has her way, he never will.

**Author's Note:**

> When I first saw "cannibal" in the list to choose from, I thought of what a "no ghouls" AU for Tokyo Ghoul might be like if they were still cannibals. And thus!


End file.
